The Strangest New Adventure Game On PlayStation Plus Makes You Speak With The Devil
Listen to the voices.
“A nun has to deliver a letter” can’t be high on anyone’s list of dream video game concepts, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Along with plenty of more easily categorizable games, PlayStation Plus this month adds one of 2024’s most idiosyncratic games, following a nun in late 19th-century Russia on a quest of hardship, faith, and platforming puzzles.
Indika is a strange beast from the very beginning. The game’s opening scene shows its heroine, the nun Indika, falling from the sky in the style of a retro arcade game, collecting pickups as she tumbles. That ends with her crashing back to reality, the camera in tight close-up on her face as she apologizes to the other sisters — clearly not for the first time — for getting caught in a daydream in the midst of her duties. That leads directly to an interminably long sequence of Indika slowly walking the grounds of the convent to collect potatoes and water, as the screen occasionally changes to show a skill tree noting that she’s gained points in (completely useless) stats like grief and duty.
Indika is a one-of-a-kind journey through a bleak winter.
Indika never really gets less jarring from there. Indika, you quickly learn, is an outcast among the other nuns, prone to bouts of intense anxiety. And though she’s committed to her life in the convent, that’s somewhat complicated by the fact that she regularly speaks to the Devil.
Yes, aside from Indika’s, the voice you’ll be hearing most during the game is that of the Devil, a constant presence inside the nun’s head, challenging her faith and trying to push her from the pious path she walks. Early in the game, Indika is given a job that conveniently gets her out of the other nuns’ hair — to deliver a letter to a distant convent, by walking it through the brutal cold and endless snow of the Russian winter. Along with the Devil, Indika is joined by Ilya, an escaped prisoner with an injured arm who claims that God is speaking to him and promising to heal him. They’re strange companions, not least of all because their journey begins with him kidnapping Indika, and the conversations between the pair and the voices in their head form the backbone of Indika’s philosophical story.
Somewhat like this year’s Many Nights a Whisper, Indika is more concerned with asking questions than answering them. Both games present a series of philosophical and moral quandaries to think over, but Indika’s take is darker, the Devil taunting the game’s protagonist with them.
Indika’s surreal journey is like nothing else in games.
That all makes for a unique, often baffling experience, especially when paired with Indika’s gameplay. Its journey through the Russian countryside consists of long stretches of slow, linear movement, broken up by often frustrating puzzles and chase sequences. When Indika lapses into memories, the scene shifts, rendered in a 16-bit style as the heroine runs through platforming stages, races, and other strange shifts from the game’s mostly slow and dour pace.
Then there are the moments when the Devil makes himself more than a voice. At times, the presence in Indika’s head contorts the world into a twisted, red-tinted nightmare version of reality, which Indika can only navigate by praying to restore things to normal, sometimes using both versions of the world she sees to navigate.
Indika is an altogether strange, somber game, but one that’s shot through with humor and absurdity in form and tone. It’s not always what you could call enjoyable, but even the parts of it that feel more like a headache make it at the very least unique. It might be one of the strangest games to join the PlayStation Plus catalog, and if you missed it last year, now is an excellent time to experience its one-of-a-kind beauty.
